In Le théatre des philosophes, Taminiaux suggests that both German Idealism and Heidegger understand Greek tragedy as ontological in its import. So does Plato who, however, censures it for the inadequacy of its ontological vision, which he seeks to correct by means of the aesthetic education of the guardians of the ideal city. Taminiaux stresses that Aristotle understands tragedy as a mimēsis of action which is pluralistic, willing to engage with appearances, and oriented toward phronēsis. A key question concerns his (...) understanding of the katharsis or purification of powerful passions, treated here as a cognitive clarification requiring the intense passional engagement that Plato censors. In response to Taminiaux’s claim that Hölderlin’s tragic inspiration is Aristotelian, this essay explores his understanding of tragic purification. In separating the hybristic union of god and man, such purification restores the possibility of interlocutory praxis. (shrink)

Part 1. Expression in Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics -- 1. Primordial perception and artistic expression: Merleau-Ponty and Cezanne -- 2. Expression, institution, and the field: a searching itinerary -- 3. Painterly and phenomenological interrogation in "Eye and mind" -- Part 2. Expression in animal life -- 4. The expressivity of animal behavior: embryogenesis and environing worlds -- 5. The expressivity of animal appearance and of directive and instinctual activities -- Part 3. Expression in Merleau-Ponty's ontology -- 6. The role of expression in (...) Merleau-Ponty's dialogue with the rationalists -- 7. The irreducibility of expression: Merleau-Ponty's ontology and its wider implications -- Concluding thoughts. (shrink)

This paper interrogates Hölderlin's effort to deconstruct the speculative matrix of tragedy, with a particular focus on his "Remarks on Antigone," which are appended to his translation of the Sophoclean tragedy. In focus are, firstly, the separative force of the caesura, which stems tragic transport and is here analyzed, in terms of Hölderlin's understanding of Greece in relation to "Hesperia," as an incipiently Hesperian poetic gesture. Secondly, Hölderlin's key thought of the mutual "unfaithfulness" of God and man is at issue: (...) the god here is revealed as sheer time, while man is thrown back upon the bare moment. This "unfaithfulness" must be tempered by a striving that turns back from the quest for transcendence to the measures of fmitude and to this world. By attentiveness to the singular (which is not the particular), the tragic poet, unlike the speculative philosopher, reveals time's agonal spacing. (shrink)

With a focus on the question of visuality in Heidegger's sustained involvement with Daoist and Zen thought, this paper discusses the interchange between Heidegger and Hisamatsu at a 1958 colloquium. In light of the key concerns – visuality, art, and the empty origin of manifestation – it interrogates three texts,The Origin of the Work of Art,Parmenides, andArt and Space,concerning visuality, the play of the glance, writing, space and place, and the Graeco-Asian though of phainesthai. In conclusion, it addresses the opening (...) for a philosophical consideration of abstract painting that these analyses provide. (shrink)